At the outset of Who Killed Jackie Bates?, University of Saskatchewan history professor Bill Waiser seems to make it pretty clear that Jackie’s parents, Ted and Rose, murdered their seven-year-old son in cold blood in rural Saskatchewan on December 5, 1933. His lifeless body was found inside a car that his parents had rented, and every available piece of evidence pointed to death by carbon monoxide poisoning. Ted and Rose were also inside the car, barely alive and suffering from numerous self-inflicted stab wounds. The crime scene seemed to indicate that Jackie died as the result of a failed death pact.
But following that grisly opening, Waiser goes on to weave a story of Depression-era despair in which all was not necessarily as it seemed. Ted, it turns out, was a serious alcoholic and a repeat failure as a businessman; Rose was a sad sack who only stayed married to her boozing husband because he would not relinquish custody of their son. Exacerbating the family’s dysfunction were the crushing economic conditions of the Dirty Thirties, which made it tough for even “normal” families to hold on to their sanity.
Waiser’s depiction of the Bates’ struggles in the years prior to Jackie’s death fleshes out the book’s central question: were Jackie’s parents cold-blooded murderers, or did the ravages of the Depression drive them insane? Were they responsible for their actions, or was the Depression itself responsible?
That question lay at the heart of the couple’s murder trial, and Waiser provides a huge amount of evidence to support both interpretations, drawing on press accounts, trial transcripts, correspondence, police reports, and personal interviews.
Who Killed Jackie Bates? is a zippy, easy read, packed with details, written by a historian who knows how to build suspense while at the same time maintaining an objective stance regarding the facts of the case.